


Alone Beside You

by squirenonny



Category: Cosmere - Brandon Sanderson, Stormlight Archive - Brandon Sanderson
Genre: 31 Days of Sadfic, CFSWF, F/M, WoR spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-16
Updated: 2015-07-16
Packaged: 2018-04-09 14:35:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4352654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squirenonny/pseuds/squirenonny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Renarin's visions come more frequently with each everstorm, and Shallan doesn't know how to help.</p>
<p>Written for CFSWF 2015</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Shallan

Renarin’s visions come more frequently with each Everstorm. At first it’s once a week, if that. Then with each highstorm and perhaps once between.

Soon they come daily. Twice a day.

Shallan tries not to show her fear—not of him, but _for_ him. Fear of losing him. He’s always so tired now. The visions wake him in the night, take him in the middle of conversations, during training. With Kaladin’s help, with every last member of Bridge Four rooting for him, he’d learned the spear and finally, _finally_ , stood tall beside his brother and his father.

Now he won’t touch even a practice spear, afraid a vision will take him and someone will get hurt.

“I’m sorry,” she says, sitting with him after a vision passes. He’s uncurled by now, lifted his eyes and taken her hand. She traces the veins in his wrist, the creases in his palm.

He stares at her, brow knit in a question he can’t find the energy to voice.

Shallan squeezes his hand. “The first time I saw you having a vision. I’m sorry for how I acted.”

“Don’t,” he says. The word sounds strained, but his eyes soften the plea. They’ve tread this ground before, voiced hurts and forgiven wrongs, but with the fear a knot at the base of her skull she’s been thinking of it again, and she needs him to know that this is different.

Pattern sits on Renarin’s shirt, against his heart, buzzing enough for Shallan to feel as she leans her head on Renarin’s shoulder. It’s become a ritual after the visions, ever since Pattern found out it helped Renarin relax. Glys lurks somewhere in the folds of Shallan’s skirts; she catches sight of him from time to time, and smiles at the reminder that Renarin’s spren no longer hides from her.

“Do you think it’s going to keep on like this?” Shallan asks. “Visions all the time, hardly time to rest between?”

Renarin has no answer for her.

* * *

They search for answers over the coming weeks. Shallan and Jasnah pore over every written record of the Radiants, though there is scarcely anything on the Truthwatchers. Dalinar and Navani dig through his visions for anything that might help, and try to tease answers out of the Stormfather. Kaladin speaks with Sylphrena and monitors Renarin’s health, as much surgeon as bodyguard these days.

Adolin doesn’t know where to look, and Shallan sees it eating away at him. He puts on a cheerful mask when he sees Renarin, though, full of optimism that Renarin pretends not to see through.

The visions come so often they no longer wake him. He talks in his sleep, his fingers twitching as though trying to form the glyphs. He never leaves Urithiru, seldom strays beyond the Radiants’ quarters at the top of the tower.

Shallan sits with him through every vision. She can’t help him, but she brings her books and her notes and she studies as she waits for him to return.

* * *

There comes a day when Renarin doesn’t wake up.

Shallan doesn’t realize it at first; the visions have been bleeding into each other. Sometimes two or three come together before Renarin returns.

It’s thirty minutes before Shallan begins to worry, an hour before her fear is a noose around her neck. She sends Pattern to find the others, but she stays and begs Renarin to return.

Adolin arrives first, out of breath from sprinting the whole way, Kaladin on his heels and glowing with Stormlight. They stare at Shallan, whose vision blurs with tears, and join her in silent vigil.

Dalinar and Navani arrive together with the king, all three grim-faced and full of questions that die when they see Renarin, lying on the couch with his head in Shallan’s lap. His skin leaks a fine mist of Light, but he’s stopped drawing glyphs and Glys is a kaleidoscope of light in his hair, chiming a mournful melody.

Jasnah is not even in Urithiru when it happens, but it takes less than an hour for her to hear by spanreed, and then she appears in a flash of light and a flurry of questions that show her fear better than tears.

* * *

She can’t stay with him always. They fight a god, and they need her. So she sneaks, and she fights, and she claws her way home whenever she has a few hours to spare.

Each time she returns, she sits with Renarin. Sometimes she thinks she sees a change. He sleeps and wakes, he eats the food they bring him. Sometimes he walks the halls, surrounded by Bridge Four—always more than are assigned to him, always. They will allow no one outside Bridge Four to guard him, and they all take their turn keeping him company when they have free shifts.

Renarin sees nothing outside the vision, but sometimes he pauses when someone speaks his name. Sometimes he speaks, and Shallan can make herself believe the words are meant for her.

She scribes for him, as Navani does for Dalinar, and when he is silent she speaks. The glyphs he writes might be a response.

She tells herself he’s alive, there’s no reason to mourn him, but she’s never felt so alone as she does sitting beside him.


	2. Renarin

Renarin knows something is wrong almost at once. The vision changes too quickly, and too subtly. Always before he’s seen a single moment, frozen between two heartbeats. It stretches out as long as he needs it to, and then he returns.

Not now.

Renarin finds himself on a ridge overlooking a battle. Soldiers in blue, in red, in gray. Parshendi in mottled red and black. Greatshells and stranger beasts. Radiants glowing like beacons. There may be two sides, or three, or more. The carnage is such that he can’t be sure.

He makes it halfway down the hillside before the vision changes—skips ahead by a few moments. Men who stood now lie dead. Greatshells have been cut down. Monstrous creatures like storms made flesh have cut trenches through the soldiers. Radiants have crossed have the battlefield to take up new fights.

Renarin pauses, because this is not how his visions work. The change unnerves him, especially after weeks worrying over the increase in frequency.

He waits, and when it seems the vision has stabilized, he continues on, picking his way down the slope, eyes fixed on the battle. He enters the fray, slipping between soldiers and monsters. He recognizes faces, and not only among the living.

The scene shifts again, and settles with a spear through Renarin’s chest.

He jerks back, and slides easily through the shaft. He knows, of course. He’s tried before to change what he sees, and found himself as insubstantial as a spren. But it’s different this time, surrounded by death, surrounded by the unknown. If the visions can change in one way, they might change in others.

Deep breaths do little to settle him. He presses a hand to his chest as he moves on.

Twice more the vision changes before he spots Adolin, his Plate riddled with cracks. He faces a greatshell with Drehy and Skar, both aflame with Stormlight.

Another shift. The greatshell dead, Adolin missing a section of plate from his left arm. Drehy closes the wound beneath with practiced sutures while Skar watches the tangle of weapons and claws around them. Renarin glances around by instinct, searching for his own face.

 _I could heal him faster_.

He’s seen himself before in the visions, though rarely. It’s always a surreal experience, and it forces him back to the present.

Today, he might welcome the abrupt departure.

* * *

The shifts continue, often only moments between one viewing and the next, sometimes longer. The end of the battle comes all at once, one moment the armies evenly matched, a line of Radiants leading the charge.

Then it’s over, the humans gone with their dead, a few greatshells and other beasts left to rot. The Parshendi are gone, like the humans. The sun is rising on a new day.

Renarin is alone, but still in the vision. He turns a slow circle, searching for…something. There must be something to see, or the vision would be over. A body? He sees none. A message? Where?

He turns toward the mountains visible on the horizon. A city sits some way beyond the battlefield. Renarin steps forward.

And is in the city. Renarin spins, skin crawling. How?

Shallan is there.

Renarin draws breath, and freezes, afraid if he moves the moment will pass. Shallan—wearing a soldier’s uniform, with a glove on her safehand. Her clothes are in tatters, her hair a tangle of red. Renarin has seen this in other visions, though the real Shallan hasn’t yet gone into battle like this.

She supports Adolin, Kaladin on his other side. Jasnah is behind them, speaking with Dalinar. There are others, nearly every Radiant Renarin has identified in his visions.

But not him.

* * *

Renarin follows Shallan as best he can. He loses her often, in the unpredictable shifts. Sometimes he sees other familiar faces, sometimes only strangers. He never sees himself, and he’s afraid to reason out what that means.

It’s difficult to track time in this vision, but Renarin is certain years pass. He finds Shallan time and again, sees her wearing other faces, sees her with Blade held high charging into battle, sees her speaking to gathered crowds and buried in texts with deep circles under her eyes. He watches lines write themselves on her face.

She can’t see him. He knows that, though he likes to pretend the words he speaks to her come through. He can’t touch her, but when she’s near he imagines her hand against his chest.

He doesn’t sleep, doesn’t grow hungry. He watches the world fall apart.

Others disappear, wandering out of his vision and not returning. Dalinar. Adolin. Kaladin. Teft and Skar and Vathah. Renarin doesn’t _know_ they are dead, but he more than suspects.

He never sees himself.

Shallan is the one constant, or as close to a constant as he can find. He loses her in the shifting scenes, but he always finds her again. He stands beside her, utterly alone, hoarding their time together.

A part of him knows these are all the tomorrows they’ll get.


End file.
